


silence is catching

by kwritten



Series: Femslash February 2021 [1]
Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Raven Cycle Fusion, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29335878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: for the prompt: "gossip girl, jenny/blair, trc blue/gansey AU, where jenny is the outsider who falls for blair"
Relationships: Jenny Humphrey/Blair Waldorf, Vanessa Abrams/Serena van der Woodsen
Series: Femslash February 2021 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2154750
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	silence is catching

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nereid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/gifts), [clytemnestras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/gifts).



> JUST A WARNING:::  
> This is mostly build-up/worldbuilding/all-the-girls and the Jenny/Blair of it all is very underwhelming. If you came for the smooches, please stay for the world.

It's in the way she hates this town and loves this town. 

Loves her father and brother and all the men that seem to multiply during the night, hates the stink and the stillness that they leave behind while they chase notes and drumbeats down the highway. Sometimes Lily calls as if being her father's once-upon-a-time groupie means that she's a surrogate mother and can make up for all the ways that fame doesn't make a family. Lily doesn't understand boys because all she has in her life is perfection and beige walls and beige clothing and a city full of beige people. Once Jenny asks why Lily never calls when Rufus is home. Says his name _Rufus_ like it's a curse and not the man who encompasses her entire world. Lily just laughs softly and in that moment, Jenny wishes her mother were alive and not just a mystery to be solved during the hours when the house is empty and she is alone. 

The contradiction of the ramshackle house on Peony Lane is what fuels Jenny into getting a third job at the pizza parlor down the highway. She just needed a little more substance for in those moments when there is nothing. Something about the way that the house is either bursting at the seams or utterly too large and too quiet. There’s this way that Jenny feels about music, sometimes, that almost makes the stillness worth it. She’ll sit at the baby grand that someone’s grandpop left them in a will and has been wedged into the liminal space between the kitchen and the formal dining room and cuts the whole first floor in half, and play at the black and white keys like they make any sense to her in the world. She breathes and sometimes music comes out, but only at dusk and at dawn when there’s no one or everyone to hear. She’s an anomaly in a house full of soundwaves. The girl who speaks in reality while all the men around her scream in verse like it will save them. She is all that is physical and they are all that is invisible. She thinks maybe that means her heart will weigh nothing at all, and she’ll be let into the afterlife like 

Dan? Well … when the house is silent, Dan is loud. Too loud. Banging at the walls with his words and words and words. He never seems to run out of words. When the house is full - when there are men and boys dangling long limbs all over the furniture and the world seems to vibrate with music, Dan sits in a corner and types in that silent way he can only if there is something there to swallow up his energy. Until he left, chasing his own dream like a sixteen year old boy knows anything about what it means to be a part of the world, and the soundwaves cheered him on. As if this were normal, this running away. 

There’s something in the way silence clings to her like a blanket. Something in the way she loves and hates this fucking town. 

Vanessa notices her first - or that’s the way the story goes. Blair is yammering on and on about her research and Georgina is playing with her plastic cup of rootbeer like it might grow wings and fly away and Serena is etching something dangerous into the red vinyl of the corner booth they think is their own and Vanessa notices her. Lean and angry, with dark eyeliner smudged around her eyes and glitter at the edges as if everything anyone has ever presumed about the delicacy of women was a lie and long blonde hair tied back to one side and she almost seemed … _sweet_ , as if the world hadn’t gotten to her yet and there was still something out there that could break her and Vanessa suddenly wanted to be part of that glitter-enhanced space for just a moment. She wants to think that they are the same, that the girl’s thrift-store combat boots mean there’s a house somewhere that she hates as much as Vanessa hates everything about herself. She tugged on the collar of her uniform and wondered how someone went about getting a waitresses’ number on a busy Friday night. 

Georgina followed the spark of Vanessa’s eyes and when she saw the girl that had been a host the week before and now was bussing tables and taking orders like she had worked there for years and not just three weekends over the past two months, she smiled. Georgina saw Vanessa watching the girl and smiled her dangerous smile that she only let Serena see when the other girl was still half in dreamland. She wondered how quickly it would take this little townie with her split ends and self-embroidered jeans to break Vanessa’s thin skin with those bright dull teeth and whether or not anyone would really care to clean up all the spilled blood afterwards. 

Serena saw George smile and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up and then she looked over at Vanessa and there were stars in the girl’s eyes that had nothing to do with the small pile of paper-packages of shredded parmesan in front of her that she always insisted on adding, no matter what kind of pizza they ordered, and something sunk in her chest. She couldn’t be sure what - she was still just waiting in that way that Serena was never waiting and Vanessa always was. (Maybe it was her turn.)

Georgina saw the crack in Serena’s heart grow another infinitesimal amount and grinned more broadly. 

Blair had been looking through her notebook - a very serious treatise on their very serious research - and had glanced up only to catch Georgina suddenly break into such a large grin that she felt rather offended and greatly taken aback. Nothing that she had been saying about their great quest could have resulted in such a bloodthirsty response and she ducked her head back to her notes to make sure she hadn’t just accidentally recalled an incantation to kill them all. Really, but George was just getting sharper and sharper all the time. 

Jenny propped her hip against their table at that moment and snapped her gum loudly. It was a dull pink gum, from the ancient gumball machine by the front door, and had lost its flavor hours ago, but it was nice to feel something between her teeth and so she kept chewing it. “What’ll it be, boys?”

Serena gave her a look of utter horror and Vanessa seemed starstruck as though a damn ghost was in their midst and that made Serena grow more surly in her way, which brightened her edges and made her hair seem more tangled and windblown than it had a moment before, and George - very uncharacteristically - sat back very low and far in the booth so that the others nearly erased her and Jenny cocked one eyebrow that the three of them noticed all at once had a tiny piercing in it. 

Blair looked at her companions in that way that distracted geniuses and queens look upon their companions, as if to say _I am far too busy for this shit, will you get a handle on yourselves for fuck’s sake_ only for once her court did not rise nor ask ‘how high’. 

“Good heavens, Humphrey,” Blair nodded at Jenny with the wisdom of an ancient god and a teenage girl. “Is there a place in this town where you _don’t_ work?”

Jenny had half a mind to remind her that the dollarmart, the florists’ on main, and a pizza parlor were hardly all that the town had to offer - but instead chose to shrug, “Maybe.”

It was in that horrible moment that Vanessa realized that she hadn’t seen the beautiful angry girl first. 

Blair ordered their usual - all meat with white sauce and stuffed crust - and returned to her grimoire with hardly another thought. 

Jenny tossed her ponytail from one shoulder to the other and sighed in a painfully loud manner about the damn Aglionby girls. 

And Serena felt a little wild. And Georgina felt a little quiet. And Vanessa felt a little smaller. 

And Blair watched the waitress’s ass as she walked back to the kitchen and didn’t think to wonder if anyone saw. 

It’s in the way she hates and loves this town, the way she wears silence on her shoulders and fills hidden valleys with soundwaves without uttering a word. It’s in the way she’s always alone and never hungry. 

It’s in the way she’s been the key to the mystery from the beginning. 

Lily arrives the next day - and Jenny doesn’t really put together that _that_ is what is strange. What is strange - is that Lily is present at all. In her shiny BMW that she hired some tall, burly person with dreadlocks and too beautiful a face to drive. Lily, all sheen and beige and gold and diamonds and she makes quite a spectacle of herself on Peony Lane. 

Jenny thinks about putting on some tea and then remembers that she’s a Humphrey and therefore the sort to only believe in black sludge that some humans refer to as coffee but her father refers to as ‘nectar’ as if gods still exist. 

Maybe if there are gods, her father is descended from one. 

Maybe if there are gods, Lily fucked one and that explains so much about the beautiful boy at her heels that Jenny never questions this presumption again. Especially once the boy smiles a crooked smile at her and she sees his heart, right there in the corner, and part of her breaks at the beauty of it. 

She’d never known that boys could be like _this_ , beautiful and otherworldly. She sees in a flash the future she always hears in Lily’s voice when she calls - this boy curled up next to her on the couch, reading. This boy and her eating grape jelly and peanut butter sandwiches and laughing until their bellies ache. This boy and her falling asleep in the back of a limo, all glitter dust and finality and dreams. Jenny had never known _longing_ for a sibling until this moment, seeing this perfect boy in her imperfect house, looking dreamily at her as if he was also thinking the same, destructive thing. 

(Lily only ever asked it in words once, at her mother’s funeral. Everyone was wearing black except Jenny who wore her mother’s favorite sunshine yellow dress because it was her mother’s favorite color and if they weren’t going to _listen to her_ and bury her beloved mother in the dress she loved best then _damnit_ , she would wear it. Everyone was wearing black except Jenny who had stayed up all night hemming the length and tightening the low collar to fit an 8-year old girl and Lily, who wore a yellow daisy brooch on her jacket and in that moment, Jenny wondered whether it had ever been Rufus that Lily had loved. Lily only asked it in words once, at her mother’s funeral, the two of them wearing her mother’s favorite things proudly and with chins raised a little too high and while her brother sobbed loudly in a corner - Dan was always too loud for his own good - and Rufus sobbed loudly in the other - though from his lips the sounds were more of a melody than a lament - Lily bent down to her ear and said, _I’ll come for you._ And it hung between them like a glass windchime, always swaying but never uttering a sound.)

Lily van der Woodsen stepped through the ramshackle house on Peony Lane with a gleaming BMW left on the street and a shiny boy at her heels and Jenny nearly choked on the cereal she had been eating. After coughing for a few moments, Jenny said, “He’s on the road,” and gestured to the silence around her as if the very absence of sound should have answered that unasked question already. And then thinks about whether or not to start some tea. 

“He’s on the road,” Lily repeats, almost shell shocked by the implications that phrase means. 

He’s on the road, you cannot crawl into his bed as though you are still a young girl and don’t want anything in life but for someone or something to cancel out the noise of your own head. He’s on the road, that’s where you left him, did you really think that he’d be standing still, waiting for you. He’s on the road, he never stops moving now. He’s on the road, he’s as good as dead to you, you might as well have buried him in the ground the last time you were here. He’s on the road, he’s on the road, he’s on the road. He’s always going to be on the road. He’s on the road, thank god. He’s on the road, you don’t have to come face to face with the grief you share. He’s on the road, he can’t ask you to rip out another piece of your heart for him - he’ll only take it with him when he goes, giving it to the world in soundwaves as if it didn’t cost you anything. He’s on the road, but the best part of them both is here - with her yellow hair sticking straight up and worn out pj’s and bright red mouth and simple heart. He’s on the road, but she’s here - right where you left her. 

“We were on our way to Aglionby,” the beautiful boy says, finally. As if to help his mother along. The look on his face one of horror and laughter and sickening awareness that he’s not where he should be, helping his mother become unstuck from her own mind. His bright, beautiful, perfect mother - _stuck_ and needing his words to help her muddle through. 

Jenny makes a face and rises from the kitchen table, realizing only then that Lily never knocked on the front door to the ramshackle house on Peony Lane. She sets her bowl in the sink and moves to the counter to start a pot of coffee. She has some of the good stuff - some grounds from the artisanal spot out near the school that a coworker had given her in exchange for covering a shift at the dollarmart. “Aglionby?” she throws over her shoulder while measuring out grounds, hoping her inflection of the vowels at least exhibit some modicum of her utter disdain for the place and the girls that attend it’s hallowed halls. 

“I didn’t realize…” Lily is still faltering, but the teenagers staring at her don’t know why and therefore have no way to help. “That it was so close.”

Jenny turns to them and crosses her arms over her chest, leaning back on the counter, “Why would you?”

The boy is still looking back and forth from his tall, blonde mother to this lean, blonde girl - seeking answers but only understanding the words and none of the spaces in-between. He’s thinking about reaching out a hand, offering his name to the girl, whose house his mother has invaded, when a clamouring sound comes from the door. Finally having some purpose, some use for his limbs and body and energy, he turns and opens it. 

Blair enters, like a queen entering a throne room and not at all like a young girl entering the home of a stranger. 

She is followed - as always - by a tangle of limbs and hair and Aglionby uniforms that make up her little court. Serena is there, looking windblown and tan as though they were just at the beach and not Greek 200, her face lighting up even more as she grabs the beautiful boy around the waist and holds him to her as if he were something made especially for her to hold. Georgina slides in, a little wispy, a little off-balance, a little at-odds with the ramshackle house on Peony Lane in the way that Lily should be but is not, her long arms and long legs thin and pale and a slight sheen across her eyes as though she had fallen asleep during the drive from Aglionby. Vanessa stumbles in last, sturdy and yet fragmented - a bruise purpling around her wrist that she keeps tugging a threadbare sweater over. They are all beautiful in a dangerous way, and they make the ramshackle house that Jenny loves so much feel _full_ even though they seem so small in comparison with what the house is used to. Jenny feels a little dizzy in their presence, so much _muchness_ coming off of them that she wants to cover her ears and scream like a toddler who doesn’t want to eat their broccoli. 

“Good heavens, Humphrey,” Blair says in a shout that feels like a whisper. This is the way she always speaks. “Is this your home?”

Vanessa turns rather green, as though she were a knight that had signed on to do an _apprenticeship_ and had been thrown into a dragon’s den on the first day with only her wits and the knife she carries in her boots. And then she turns her gaze to Blair, rather softly and a little wistfully, as though the repeated phrase _good heavens humphry_ were a spell she needed to untangle. 

Serena nodded her head with the wisdom of an ancient cleric, knowing that her queen believed - with all her bright, dangerous heart - that the girl in ratty pj’s and no makeup and bare feet on a dirty kitchen floor, had indeed been dropped into their laps from heaven. And though Serena was the most jealous of them - and the most jealous of _all_ of them - but also, the one who had known Blair the longest, part of her consciousness made way for this girl and embraced her as part of their new reality. 

Georgina tried very, very hard to breathe. There was something in the very molecules of the air in the ramshackle house on Peony Lane that wanted to pull her apart. She felt the need to scream. To yell. To stomp her feet and cry. To run out the door and never return. She reached out her hand and Serena laced her fingers with hers and that solidified her. Why why why did this place feel so … hollow? She wanted to fill it up fill it up fill it up as quickly as possible. Blair took another step inside and the tightness in George’s chest eased slightly. Just a little more, she begged silently. Just a little more space. I need you to make me a little more space to breathe. 

Jenny cocked one eyebrow at Blair Waldorf, and this made the beautiful boy love her in such a degree that she never left his heart again, “What are you doing here?”

And Lily realized that she had just begun something. Something she had wanted so desperately to stop before it came into being. _Fate_ , Lily sighed to herself in that ramshackle house that was suddenly bursting at the seams and might at any moment come crashing down around them, _was a bitch._

Jenny Humphrey cocked one eyebrow at Blair Waldorf and the _muchness_ clanged into a steady line between them, like a golden thread of Fate the two could nearly taste with its nearness. And Blair cocked the opposite eyebrow back and grinned with the purest pleasure she had felt in years. 

And something clicked far underground, where only Serena could hear and only Vanessa could feel and George could only cling cling cling to the present to stop from dissolving into dust.


End file.
